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X-WR-CALNAME:Mental States: Ordering Psychiatric Disorder in France
X-WR-TIMEZONE:Eastern Time (US & Canada)
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DTSTAMP:20260616T151557Z
UID:tag:localist.com\,2008:EventInstance_51339597150283
DTSTART:20260220T200000Z
DTEND:20260220T210000Z
DESCRIPTION:Presented by Alex V. Barnard\, Assistant Professor of Sociology
  at New York University (NYU)\n\nIs there an underlying order to how socie
 ties classify\, treat\, and control madness? Both popular and scholarly po
 rtrayals of contemporary mental health systems emphasize service fragmenta
 tion and inter-professional competition. In this talk\, I draw on a year o
 f in-depth fieldwork in France\, including observations in a public mental
  health clinic\, social service office\, and courts\, supplemented with ne
 arly two-hundred interviews with administrators and clinicians\, to show t
 he underlying logic to the trajectories of people with serious mental illn
 ess through the welfare state. As I show\, decision-making across these si
 tes is linked by a shared conception\, both embedded in formal policy and 
 informal practices\, of what makes someone a malade—a real mentally-ill 
 person. This strong medical and bureaucratic identity ties this population
  to a paternalist\, protective psychiatric system\, in sharp contrast to t
 he U.S.\, where the absence of a clear administrative category for this po
 pulation leads to a chaotic mix of coercion and care from jails\, shelters
 \, and hospitals. While these results reveal the power of the French state
  to construct a particular definition of what it means to have a serious m
 ental illness\, I show how defining the population in this way constrains 
 attempts to reform the system. This talk suggests how the dynamic interpla
 y between categories adopted in official policy\, used in professional pra
 ctice\, and adopted by populations themselves can reproduce national diffe
 rences\, even in an era where psychiatric knowledge and medical treatment 
 are converging across national borders. \n\nSpeaker\n\nAlex V. Barnard is 
 an assistant professor of sociology at New York University and holds a PhD
  in sociology from the University of California\, Berkeley. His work exami
 nes medical and bureaucratic decision-making\, welfare policy\, and social
  control comparatively. His previous book\, Conservatorship: Inside Califo
 rnia's System of Coercion and Care for Mental Illness (Columbia University
  Press)\, examines California's involuntary treatment system\, showing how
  a failure of government oversight and inter-agency coordination leads to 
 the extensive use of coercive interventions that provide neither care nor 
 control. Ongoing projects include examining trends in national legislation
  around involuntary psychiatric treatment\, analyzing variation in the pol
 icing of protests and university responses to the 2024 student protest enc
 ampments\, and the governance of emerging addictions to online gambling an
 d AI.\n\nHost\nInstitute for European Studies\, part of the Einaudi Center
  for International Studies\n\nCo-host \nThe Department of Sociology Colloq
 uium Series
GEO:42.447296;-76.482254
LOCATION:Uris Hall\, G08
SUMMARY:Mental States: Ordering Psychiatric Disorder in France
URL;VALUE=URI:https://events.cornell.edu/event/alex-v-barnard
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
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